Eric Hobsbawm on the Rougon-Macquart series

Here’s British historian Eric Hobsbawm on the importance of Zola’s Rougon-Macquartseries:

The history of the bourgeoisie, key class of our period, remains to be adequately written, certainly in English and in generally accessible form. Asa Briggs, Victorian People (1955) is a useful introduction, but the best guide is to be found in the Rougon-Macquart series of novels by Emile Zola, which analyse the society of the French Second Empire, and whose documentary reliability is high.